Well a hell of alot less pain-oriented. Except for sunday itself. Oh fuck.

Y'see, body + several scalpel incisions = long-term pain. Obviously this is why surgery patients get pain medication. However before I could go home, I needed to pick up said medication. But there was a weird processing problem because, apparently, my insurance company thinks I'm a chick. Thankfully I got that straightened out (on the pharmacy end) and received my wonder pills for 5 bucks.

During that time, I also learned that the receptionist that'd keyed me into the system has massacred my name. That would not be so hot with my insurance and my surgery bill. I could just imagine it:

"Well, the names are kinda similar, but this record says it's a guy...but our records say it's a woman."

"Think it's Osama?"

"Going to an urgent care facility in Wisconsin?"

"...Sure?"

"You're right. Call Homeland Security and Scott McClellan."

Yeah. So I set the record straight with the receptionist of the way-too-white teeth. And on my way home, after taking all that extra time to set things straight, the lidocaine (anaesthetic) wore off.

Undreamt of pain resulted.

I couldn't tell if I was on the verge of screaming or crying by the time I got into my apartment. I vividly remember taking a vicodine, stripping down to get into the shower, washing the affected area, and almost sputtering while I grunted out things like, "Goddamn fucking vicodine, work!" There were lots of variations using fuck. For one, you're supposed to take vicodine with food or milk. This struck me as suburban WASP biased bullshit. The only thing I regularly have in my fridge is booze and barbeque sauce, and I'm not about to have a meal every 4 hours I need a pain pill. So bourgeoise concepts like snack foods and milk got a hearty round of ranting from yours truly.

Hey, I ain't graceful when it feels like I'm being stabbed repeatedly with a ginsu knife.

But soon thereafter, things were good. I showered around 12 times that day. Doctors recommend 5 cleansings, but it felt a hell of alot better each time--so I indulged. Plus there's that whole bleeding at a constant but very slow rate, so I figure showering alot is a good idea. Really, you're supposed to soak surgery sites like mine, but again: suburban WASP bullshit bias, thinking I have a bathtub. So I created a funnel system using my shower, body contortion in the unforgiveably nasty shower stall, and got more or less the same result.

The game plan for monday was simple: go in for an hour or so, record some baseline behavior for the two monkeys currently in my experiment, simultaneously talk with Dr. C about stuff, and head out.

Seeing as how not a force on earth or in hell could have gotten me to walk, I drove my car. Got to parallel park for the first time ever on the left side of the street. Nothing exploded.

I set up the camera stuff and, like I said, talked to Dr. C. He was his usual self, smiling and attentive and thoughtful. He could tell I was in pain, and thought it fine that I wanted to start the second experiment next week (instead of this one). We talked about a few other things, but the bottom line was that I could just go home, watch tv, do whatever and not worry about keeping busy otherwise. Gabe, one of my supervisors, was of the same mindset. In fact, when I came in and was talking to Dr. C, I could swear I got a "you'd better go home when you said you were" look from her in the hallway.

Sure enough, she said as much with a slight smile when the hour was up and I'd gotten an hour's worth of monkeys being monkeys.

One thing I hadn't expected, though, was getting a birthday card from her. She offered some belated b-day wishes and said that, when I got better, they'd get a cake. That just got me beaming, mostly since I only engage my colleagues on a professional basis. It was a really cute card, too, with New Yorker style monkeys on the cover and an subtly amusing joke.

Incidentally, I hadn't expected it because I tell noone except official documents and clerks when my birthday is. Yeah: I randomly hang out in forests at night, read kabbalah, work with monkeys, and don't like having a big fuss made about me. I like to think of birthdays as quiet, reflective times, where I look at where I've been and where I'm going. Thoughtful shit, not drinking until I vomit pink horses and schnapps. That and I want people to treat me well if the situation calls for it, and not a random day where people are obliged to do that. That and the fact that I can never be bothered to send out cards or gifts to anyone on their birthdays, so it's sorta a moot point to even mention mine. It's like the Cold War: both sides have a mutual understanding and the status quo goes on.

So ranting aside, I got back to my apartment, did some paperwork, sent said paperwork out, took a vicodine, and promptly had a 2-3 hour nap reverie. You know the kind: you're semi-conscious, you wake up, but you're not sure you're awake, you dream for awhile, you wake up again, lather rinse repeat. It was awesome. I hadn't had a nap in years.

Ohhh, and while I'm on the subject. If you can ever take 1000mg of vicodine before bed, you should do it. That it heaven in two pills, my friend. As if even my spirit had a pillow to lay down on. Now I only need one to zonk out, though.

And so the usual continues: politics from the mainstream media, C-Span, several online politics blogs, computer games, writing, etc. etc. I can't do anything experiment-related in the lab this week, so in a perverse way I get an early bit of vacation.

I guess random medical problems, excruciating pain, and surgery can have a silver-lining.

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